Money vs Justice

[Jeff Maginty]

..

[DodgyAgent]

Seems to me that in this country (& wider western-world) we've reached a stage where money is considered more important than justice.

Here are three examples of this that really stand out in the current economic climate...

1) Talk of "We must let bankers have their bonuses or they might leave and take their special skills with them"

2) Talk of "Anyone who criticises rewards-for-failure / fat-cats-huge-remuneration is anti-businsess / anti-capitalist"

3) Printing money to reward the reckless and punish the prudent

It's all very well trying to justify the status quo by claiming that things would be worse if we changed things, but two wrongs don't make a right.

Points 1) & 2) are easy to address... The game should have been over when the banks required bailing out. The then government should have insisted on controlling bankers pay as a mandatory condition of the bail-out.

Point 3) is harder to address. Maybe they could have still printed money but created an additional tax for anyone who is in debt and increased interest rates for savers.

Vested interests will always come up with some apparently clever/complex argument for why things should be allowed to continue (in their favour obviously), but sometimes it's necessary to just cut through all the bulltulip and say "No. That is wrong and it's an injustice. Things MUST change."

There are a number of other questions that I would like to ask. such as:

1. If bankers are being paid such huge bonuses then they are also paying half of this money in tax. The question is what is happening to that tax?
2. Why are bankers paid so much in the first place? Is there a lack of competition?
3. How do you cut bankers pay without cutting everyone who runs a sucessful business pay also?

It is my opinion that the private sector (and I dont mean banks) have done their bit in stumping up 50% of everything they earn. Why is it that the state cannot get even close to fulfilling its obligations. Which then begs the question that if bankers and the rest of the undeserving rich stump up say 90% of everything they earn will this mean that standards of public sector services will improve and that poverty will be eradicated?

I thought not.

[xoggoth]

It's all very well trying to justify the status quo by claiming that things would be worse if we changed things, but two wrongs don't make a right.

I think we have to be practical and the truth is that banking could easily go somewhere else, Dubia, the US, Switzerland etc. Not much point feeling satisfied at our morality if we, and that will include the lower income groups, are worse off. However, keeping tax low is not the same thing as lack of regulation, interesting (well, not really, but relevant) thing here:

http://www.norges-bank.no/upload/imp...3/chapter1.pdf

In other cases, like energy, the govt could certainly afford to force a reduction in profits, they can't sell to UK citizens outside of the UK tax system. All the bonus furore aside, I think the transport and energy sectors have more imact on people.

[TimberWolf]

3. How do you cut bankers pay without cutting everyone who runs a sucessful business pay also?

Bankers have been successful

[d000hg]

...

Do you post anything on CUK except lengthy rants against bankers and capitalism?

Have you considered starting a blog for such things?

[sasguru]

Bankers have been successful

Yes quite a few, perhaps even most. Although you'd have to look beyond the current propaganda

[TimberWolf]

Yes quite a few, perhaps even most. Although you'd have to look beyond the current propaganda

Depends whether you believe it was New Labour that has put us in penury for the next generation or two, or the bwankers.

Anyone know what the balance sheet is for bwankers. And I don't mean the money they 'make' fleecing UK people and businesses, I mean net money in from abroad.